Vixen in Velvet (5 page)

“You don’t need any more work,” Jeffreys said. “You need more rest, madame. You can’t be three people.”

Leonie smiled. “No, but with your help, I might be nearly that. But do let us make haste. I must get there before it’s over.”

Later that evening

L
eonie hurried into the conversation room adjoining the New Western Athenaeum’s lecture hall—

—and stopped short as a tall, black-garbed figure emerged from the shadows of a window embrasure.

“I thought you’d never come,” Lord Lisburne said.

He was not, she saw, dressed entirely in black. In addition to the pristine white shirt and neckcloth, he wore a green silk waistcoat, exquisitely embroidered in gold. It called attention to his narrow waist . . . thence her gaze wandered lower, to the evening trousers that lovingly followed the muscled contours of his long legs.

Leonie took a moment to settle her breathing. “Did we have an appointment?” she said. “If so, I must have made it while concussed, because I don’t recall.”

“Oh, I was sure you’d be here.” He waved a gloved hand at the door to the lecture hall. “Swanton. Young ladies in droves.” He waved at her dress. “Advertising.”

For this event, she’d chosen a green silk. Though a dress for evening, exposing more neck than day attire did, it was simple enough to suit a public lecture. No blond lace or ruffles and only minimal embroidery, of a darker green, above the deep skirt flounce and along the hem. The immense sleeves provided the main excitement, slashed to reveal what would appear to be chemise sleeves underneath—a glimpse of underwear, in other words. Over it she’d thrown, with apparent carelessness, a fine silk shawl, a wine red and gold floral pattern on a creamy white ground that called attention to the white enticingly visible through the slashing.

“I meant to arrive earlier,” she said. “But we had a busy day at the shop, and the heat makes everybody cross and impatient. The customers are sharp with the girls in the shop, who then go into the workroom and quarrel with the seamstresses. We had a little crisis. It took longer to settle than it ought to have done.”

“Lucky you,” he said. “You missed ‘Poor Robin.’ ”

“ ‘Poor Robin’?” she said.

He set his hat over his heart, bowed his head, and in a sepulchral voice intoned:

When last I heard that peaceful lay

In all its sweetness swell,

I little thought so soon to say—

Farewell, sweet bird, farewell!

All cloudy comes the snowy morn,

Poor Robin is not here!

I miss him on the fleecy thorn,

And feel a falling tear.

“Oh, my,” she said.

“It continued,” he said, “for what seemed to be an infinite number of stanzas.”

Her heart sank. One must give Lord Swanton credit for using his influence to raise funds for a worthwhile organization. All the same, if she had to listen to “Poor Robins” for another two hours or even more, she might throw herself into the Thames.

“Lord Swanton seems to take life’s little sorrows very much to heart,” she said.

“He can’t help himself,” Lord Lisburne said. “He tries, he says, to be more like Byron when he wrote
Don Juan
, but it always comes out more like an exceedingly weepy version of
Childe Harold.
At best. But happily for you, there’s no more room.”

No room
. Relief wafted through her like a cooling breeze. She wouldn’t have to sit through hours of dismal poetry—

But she hadn’t come for her own entertainment, she reminded herself. This was
business
. Where Lord Swanton appeared, Maison Noirot’s prime potential clientele would be. Equally important, Lady Gladys would be here.

“All the better if it’s a crush,” Leonie said. “And a late entrance will draw attention.”

“Even if you deflated the sleeves and skirt, you couldn’t squeeze in,” he said. “I gave up my place and
two
women took it. The lecture hall is packed to the walls. That, by the way, is where most of the men have retreated to. Since they’re bored and you’re young and pretty, you might expect to encounter a lot of sweaty hands trying to go where they’ve no business to be.”

Leonie’s skin crawled. She’d been pawed before. Being able to defend herself did not make the experience any less disgusting. “I told Lady Gladys I’d be here,” she said.

“Why on earth did you do that?”

“It’s business,” she said.

“None of mine, in other words,” he said.

She had no intention of explaining about Paris and the night she’d been hurrying home, to warn her sisters of the danger, and found herself in a mob of men, being groped and narrowly escaping rape.

This wasn’t Paris, she told herself. This was London, and the place did not contain a mob. It was merely crowded, like so many other social gatherings. She walked to the lecture hall door.

He followed her. “A hot, stuffy room, crammed with excitable young women and irritated men, and Swanton and his poetic friends sobbing over fallen leaves and dead birds and wilted flowers,” he said. “Yes, I can understand why you can’t bear to be left out.”

“It’s
business
,” she said.

She cracked open the door and peered inside.

She had a limited view, through a narrow space the doorkeepers had managed to maintain in front of the door. Primarily women occupied the seats on the ground floor, and they were so tightly squeezed together, they were half in one another’s laps. They and a few men—fathers and brothers, most likely—thronged the mezzanine and upper gallery as well. The latter seemed to sag under the weight. Men filled every square inch of the standing room. The space was stifling hot, and the aroma of tightly packed bodies assaulted her nostrils.

Meanwhile somebody who wasn’t Lord Swanton was reading, in throbbing tones, an ode to a dying rose.

She retreated a step. Her back came up against a warm, solid mass. Silk whispered against silk.

Lord Lisburne leaned in to look over her shoulder, and the mingled scents of freshly pressed linen and shaving soap and male wiped out the smell of the crowd and swamped her senses.

“Aren’t you glad you were late?” he said. “You might be sitting in there.” His breath tickled her ear. “And you wouldn’t be able to get out until it was over.”

She’d be trapped, listening to poetic dirges, for hours. She closed her eyes and told herself it was
business
, then took a steadying breath and opened them again. She would go through this door. She—

His large, gloved hand settled on the door inches from her shoulder. He closed the door.

“I have an idea,” he said. “Let’s go to the circus.”

Chapter Three

Never warn me, my dear, to take care of my heart,

When I dance with yon Lancer, so fickle and smart;

What phantoms the mind of eighteen can create,

That boast not a charm at discreet twenty-eight.

—Mrs. Abdy, “A Marrying Man,” 1835

M
iss Noirot turned quickly. Since Lisburne hadn’t moved, she came up against him, her bosom touching his waistcoat for one delicious instant. She smelled delicious, too.

She brought up her hand and gave him a push, and not, as you’d think, a little-girlish or flirtatious sort of push. It was a firm shove. While not strong enough to move him, it was a clear enough signal that she wasn’t playing coquette.

He took the message and retreated a pace.

“The circus,” she said, much as she might have said, “The moon.”

“Astley’s,” he said. “It’ll be fun.”

“Fun,” she said.

“For one thing, no melancholy verse,” he said. “For another, no melancholy verse. And for a third—”

“It’s on the other side of the river!” she said, as though that were, indeed, the moon.

“Yes,” he said. “That puts the full width of the Thames between us and the melancholy verse.”

“Us,” she said.

“You got all dressed up,” he said. “What a shocking waste of effort if you don’t go out to an entertainment.”

“The circus,” she said.

“It’s truly entertaining,” he said. “I promise. Actors and acrobats and clowns. But best of all are the feats of horsemanship. Ducrow, the manager, is a brilliant equestrian.”

For all his careless manner, Lisburne rarely left much to chance. In her case, he’d done his research. Her given name was Leonie and she was, as she’d said, the businesswoman of Maison Noirot. One sister had married a duke, the other the heir to a marquessate, yet she went to the shop every day, as though their move into the highest ranks of the aristocracy made no difference whatsoever. This was an odd and illuminating circumstance.

The seamstresses, he’d learned, worked six days a week, from nine in the morning until nine at night, and her own hours seemed to be the same or longer. This, he’d concluded, greatly increased the odds against her having time to spend at Astley’s or any other place of entertainment.

She gave a little shake of her head, and waved her hand in an adorably imperious manner, signaling him to get out of her way.

He knew he stood too close—that was to say, as close as one could get without treading on her hem, women taking up a deal of space these days, in the arm and shoulder area as well as below the waist. In her case, he tested the boundary more than usual. Still, he was a man of considerable, and successful, experience with women.

He obediently moved out of the way to walk alongside.

“Here’s the thing,” he said as he accompanied her across the conversation room. “We can take a hackney to Astley’s, watch the show for an hour or so, and still get back before this funeral is over. By that time, the crowd’s bound to have thinned out. The girls are all here with chaperons. A good many girls, I promise you, will be dragged home earlier than they like, because there’s a limit, you know, to how much a brother, say, will sacrifice for his sister. Same for Papa and Mama and Great Aunt Philomena.”

They’d reached the door to the lobby. He opened it.

She sailed through, in a thrilling swish of silk.

“I know you’re unlikely to find the sort of clientele you prefer in a place like Astley’s,” he said. “But I thought you might enjoy the women’s costumes.”

“Not half so much as you will, I daresay,” she said. “Skimpy, are they?”

“Yes, of course, like a ballerina or nymph or whatever it is Miss Woolford will be playing,” he said. “She’s a treat. But the whole show is wonderful. The performers stand on the horses’ backs, and go round and round the ring. And the horses perform the cleverest tricks. As good as the acrobats.”

She looked up, her blue gaze searching.

He bore the scrutiny easily. A boy born beautiful becomes a target for other boys, and the schools he’d attended never ran short of bullies. He’d learned very young to keep his feelings out of sight and out of reach unless he needed to use them.

You are like a diamond
, one of his mistresses had told him.
So beautiful, so much light and fire. But when one tries to find the man inside, it’s all reflections and sparkling surfaces.

Why need anybody see more?

True, he wasn’t the shattered young man he’d been nearly six years ago, when his father died. The loss had devastated all the members of the tight-knit little family Father had created. That family, comprising not only Lisburne and his mother but her sister—Swanton’s mother—as well as Swanton, had fled England together. Still, it had taken a good while, far away from London and the fashionable world, to recover.

Few, including the many who’d respected and loved his father, understood the magnitude of the loss. Not that Lisburne wanted their understanding. His feelings were nobody’s business but his own.

All the same, he knew what true grief was, and mawkish sentiment made him want to punch somebody.

He couldn’t punch Swanton or his worshippers.

Much more sensible to set about what promised to be a challenging game: seducing a fascinating redhead.

“You’ll like it,” he said. “I promise. And I promise to get you back here before the lecture is over.”

She looked away. “I’ve never seen an equestrian,” she said.

And his heart leapt, startling him.

A
stley’s was crowded, as always, but the multitude seemed not to trouble Miss Noirot as much as the crowd at Swanton’s lecture had done. Perhaps this was because the space was so much larger and more open. In any event, Lisburne took her to a private box, where she wouldn’t be jostled, and from which she’d have a prime view of both the stage and arena.

They arrived too late for the play, which was a pity, since it usually featured fine horses and horsemanship and stirring battle scenes. They were in good time for the entertainment in the arena, though. He and Miss Noirot settled into their seats as the crew members were shaking sawdust into the ring.

It had been an age since he’d entered the premises, and Lisburne had thought it would seem shabby, now that he was older and had lived abroad and watched spectacles on the Continent.

Perhaps the place awoke the boy in him, who’d somehow survived life’s shocks and lessons and had never entirely grown up or become fully civilized. He must be seeing it through a boy’s eyes because Astley’s seemed as grand as ever. The lights came up round the ring, and the chandeliers seem as dazzling, the orchestra as glamorous as he remembered.

Or maybe he saw it fresh through her great blue eyes.

He’d observed the small signs of apprehension when they’d first entered and the way the uneasiness dissolved, once she’d settled into her place and started to take in her surroundings. She sat back, a little stiff, as a clown came out and joked with the audience. She watched expressionlessly when the ringmaster appeared, carrying his long whip. Her gaze gave away nothing as he strode about the ring and engaged in the usual badinage with the clown.

Then the ringmaster asked for Miss Woolford. The crowd erupted.

And Miss Noirot leaned forward, grasping the rail.

The famous equestrienne walked out into the arena, the audience went into ecstasies, and Miss Noirot the Inscrutable drank it all in, as wide-eyed and eager as any child, from the time the ringmaster helped Miss Woolford into the saddle, through every circuit of the ring. When the performer stood on the horse’s back, Miss Noirot gasped.

“So marvelous!” she said. “I don’t even know how to ride one, and she stands on the creature’s back—while it runs!”

When, after numerous circuits, Miss Woolford paused to rest herself and her horse, Miss Noirot clapped and clapped, and cried,
“Brava! Bravissima!”

The pause allowed for more play between the clown and ringmaster, but Miss Noirot turned away from the clown’s antics—and caught Lisburne staring at her.

For a moment she stared back. Then she laughed, a full-throated, easy laugh.

And his breath caught.

The sound. The way she looked at this moment, eyes sparkling, countenance aglow.

“How right you were,” she said. “Much more fun than dismal verse. How clever she is! Can you imagine the hours she’s spent to learn that art? How old do you think she was when she first began? Was she bred to it, the way actors often are—and dressmakers, too, for that matter.”

The eagerness in her voice. She was so young, so vibrantly alive.

“I reckon, even if they’re bred to it, they fall on their heads a number of times before they get the hang of it,” he said. “But they must start young, when they’re less breakable.”

“Not like dressmaking,” she said. “Sooner or later would-be equestrians have to get on the horse. But we mayn’t cut a piece of silk until we’ve been sewing seams for an eternity and made a thousand handkerchiefs and aprons. What a pleasure it is to see a woman who’s mastered such an art! The equestrians are mostly men, aren’t they?”

“That does account in part for Miss Woolford’s popularity.”

“But she’s very good—or does my total ignorance of horsemanship show?”

“She’s immensely talented,” he said. “A ballerina equestrienne.”

“This is wonderful,” she said. “My sisters are always telling me I need to get away from the shop, but Sunday comes round only once a week, and then I like to spend time with my niece, or outdoors, preferably both. Sometimes we go to the theater, but this is entirely different. It smells different, certainly.”

“That would be the horses,” he said.

“Beautiful creatures,” she said.

He caught the note of wistfulness. He considered it, along with her reactions to Miss Woolford, and filed it away for future reference.

The second part of the equestrian performance began then, and she turned back to the stage.

He looked that way, too, outwardly composed, inwardly unsettled. She’d changed before his eyes from a sophisticated Parisian to an excited girl, and for a moment she’d seemed so vulnerable that he felt . . . what? Ashamed? But of what? He was a man. She was a woman. They were attracted to each other and they played a game, a very old game. Yet along with the thrill of the chase he felt a twinge of something like heartache.

And why should he not? Hadn’t he endured an hour of death and dying in rhyme? And was he not obliged to go back to it?

I
t seemed to Leonie a very short time before she and Lord Lisburne were in a hackney again, traveling along Westminster Bridge Street, back to the “obsequies,” as he had put it a moment ago.

He’d been true to his word.

But then, she’d felt certain he would be, else she wouldn’t have come with him.

Yes, she’d been aware of his watching her during the performance when he thought she wasn’t paying attention to him. As though one could sit beside the man and not be aware of him, even if a host of heavenly angels floated down to the stage or a herd of elephants burst into the arena. And when she’d turned and caught him at it, he’d looked so like a boy caught in mischief—a boy she wanted to know—that her logic faltered for a moment, and something inside her gave way.

But only for a moment.

Now he was the charming man of the world again, and she was Leonie Noirot, logical and businesslike and able to put two and two together.

“You don’t care for his poetry, yet you came back with Lord Swanton to London for the release of his book,” she said. “That’s prodigious loyalty.”

He laughed. “A man ought to stick by his friend in hours of trial.”

“To protect him from excited young women?”

“That wasn’t the original plan, no. We’d prepared for a humiliating return. The reviewers were savage. Didn’t you know?”

“I’m not very literary,” she said. “I look at the reviews of plays and concerts and such, but mainly we’re interested in what the ladies are wearing. I rarely have time for the book reviews.”

“He’d had a few of the poems published in magazines before
Alcinthus and Other Poems
came out,” he said. “The reviewers loathed his work, unanimously and unconditionally. They lacerated him. They parodied him. It was a massacre. Until he saw the reviews, Swanton had been on the fence about coming back to London when his book was unleashed on the general public. After that, the choice was clear: Return and face the music or stay away and be labeled a coward.”

“I had no idea,” she said. “I was aware that his lordship had returned to London when the book came out because everybody was talking about it. Certainly our ladies were. I haven’t heard that much excitement since the last big scandal.” The one Sophy had precipitated.

“We’re still not sure what happened, exactly,” he said. “We arrived in London the day before it was to appear in the shops. We had a small party, and Swanton was a good sport about the rotten reviews—he doesn’t have a high opinion of himself to start with, so he wasn’t as desolated as another fellow might have been. We made jokes about it at White’s club. Then, a few days after we arrived, we had to order more copies printed, and quickly. Mobs of young women were storming the bookshop doors. The booksellers said they hadn’t seen anything like it since Harriette Wilson published her memoirs.”

Harriette Wilson had been a famous courtesan. Ten years ago, men had paid her
not
to mention them in her memoirs.

“Lord Swanton seems to have struck a chord in young women’s hearts,” she said.

“And he’s as bewildered as the critics.” Lord Lisburne looked out of the window.

At this time of year, darkness came late, and even then it seemed not a full darkness, but a deep twilight. Tonight, a full moon brightened it further, and Leonie saw that they must have crossed Westminster Bridge some while ago. She saw, too, the muscle jump in his jaw.

“Sudden leaps to fame can be dangerous,” he said. “Especially when young women are involved. I should like to get him back to the Continent before . . .” He trailed off and shrugged. “That crowd tonight troubled you. The one at the lecture.”